Category: Does Science Match the Bible?

What is being called the “largest gathering of the secular movement in world history” is taking place in Washington, DC, on March 24, 2012. New Atheists like Richard Dawkins are gathering in Washington on this date by droves to participate in the Reason Rally (www.ReasonRally.com) to contend that atheism and secular humanism are the most reasonable worldviews. There are now more atheists/agnostics/humanists in America than Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists combined, and they want to make their voice heard that “Atheism is reasonable.” Only atheism is a worldview of reason. Are they right?

Christians will also be attending the Reason Rally. This coordinated effort purposes to show that secularism is not the vessel of reason and Christianity is. The Christians are responding with an alternative website (www.TrueReason.org) and a direct response to the Reason Rally through a book to be published in early March.

Clearly this rally is a battle in a larger conflict for the mind and heart of every person in the world. Who has the upper edge on reason? Surely whatever view is true must be the most reasonable. We use reasoning capacities in everything from examining evidence in court to deciding what tires to buy, and thus our view of the world and what lies beyond can hardly be the exception to reason’s critiques. The Reason Rally’s argument that atheism is the only reasonable worldview is already believed by many who hold that religion equals irrationality and atheism equals the only choice for modern, educated men and women.

But is atheism truly reasonable? Let’s examine atheism on its own claimed turf, Reason. From the origins of the universe and the world of microscopic life to the reliability of an ancient document and the occurrence of an event two thousand years ago, we’ll check out atheism against its own standard.

In the Beginning

Atheism maintains that the universe is all there is and there are no supernatural forces involved. Yet modern scientific theory and discovery have shown superbly strong evidence that the universe had a beginning. These discoveries give atheism a problem, stated best in logic:

Whatever has a beginning had a cause to begin it.

The universe had a beginning.

Thus, the universe had a cause.

The first two statements are logical premises, and the last statement is the conclusion inferred from the previous statements. If the two premises are true and the logical argument is valid, then the conclusion is true also. This conclusion is not what atheism wants, because a cause of the universe would be separate from the universe – not a part of the universe. And since the universe contains all nature and is synonymous with nature, nature would be caused by the supernatural – that which is beyond nature.

So are the first two logical statements correct? The first, “whatever has a beginning has a cause,” is quite obviously true. A baby begins crying because of the cause of hunger. A war begins because of the cause of conflicting ideologies. A car begins existing because of the cause of the machinations of a factory and human engineering. This basic principle is the basis for all scientific study: Every effect has a sufficient cause. Rocks roll down hills because of gravity and lightweight bugs can walk on water because of surface tension. Nothing “pops” into existence all by itself – if something could, we could never be sure of the cause of anything. If something began existing sometime in the past, then some other person or thing caused it to be. Everyone, from children to doctors of philosophy, know intuitively that every effect has a cause.

So what about the second premise, “the universe had a beginning”? Vast amounts of scientific data and virtually all scientists support this statement, based on many reasonable evidences:

1. Second Law of Thermodynamics. One of the most proven scientific laws, this principle basically states that the universe is running out of usable energy and going from order to disorder. Useful work, such as the swing of an arm or the combustion in an engine, are not one hundred percent efficient and thus lose usable energy through friction or heat. Everything runs down over the course of time. Intelligent, directed activity can halt the tendency towards disorder, such as the growth of living organisms or the building of structures by intelligent humans or animals; but these upward activities eventually give way to the increase of disorder. Buildings collapse; we get old.

This move from order to disorder implies that the universe had once been “started” with a high degree of order. If the universe is “winding down,” then it makes sense that it once was “wound up.” If the universe was eternal in age, this tendency to disorder would have decomposed everything into a useless state by now. In fact, if there is no interruption from a creative source, scientists predict that the universe will decay and die in a “heat death” as a result of the second law of thermodynamics. Thus, since we have not yet experienced this heat death, the universe has not grown old enough to die. Since it has not gone through enough time to die, it must have begun life in the past. Thus, the universe had a beginning which was highly ordered.

A high degree of order is exactly what Christianity states how the universe began – “very good” in God’s sight. Atheism, on the other hand, says the universe formed randomly with no plan and moved upwards in complexity – quite the opposite of the order-to-disorder tendency of the second law of thermodynamics. Thus, which view is more reasonably true when we look at the evidence from the second law of thermodynamics?

2. An Expanded Universe. When Mr. Hubble looked through his Hubble telescope in California, he made a discovery that shocked the twentieth century scientific world: the universe has expanded. The light from all the galaxies were redshifted, which meant that they were flying away from earth and each other in all directions. Galaxies flying away from each other meant that the universe expanded and/or is expanding. Conversely, if the galaxies’ light was blueshifted, the galaxies would be converging and thus the universe would be collapsing.

This universal expansion, in which space itself is stretching and bringing the galaxies with it, means that the universe once was smaller than it is today. Keep rewinding the universe back in time, and the universe shrinks into an infinitely small point. Thus, such an expanding universe could not have been expanding forever, but it must have begun its existence in a moment in time.

Some atheists try getting around this problem of an expanding universe by speculating that the universe goes through a cycle of expanding and contracting; this idea is called the oscillating universe hypothesis. It’s not much more than a guess, since it hardly has any evidence, and much against it. First, the second law of thermodynamics stated above would drain the usable energy from each expansion/contraction cycle until there was no more energy to do either. Second, there is not enough gravity in the universe to pull the universe into a “Big Crunch.” Third, there is no physical mechanism known that can initiate a new “Big Bang” from the hypothetical Big Crunch. Thus, rather than following the reasonable conclusion of an expanding universe, the oscillating universe idea clutches to little more than speculation in order to escape the conclusions of reason.

3. Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Even before Mr. Hubble discovered the expanding universe in his telescope, Mr. Einstein was puzzled over his mathematical equations, which showed him that the universe – all space, matter, and even time – began from nothing. Einstein, preferring to believe in an eternal universe (which was in scientific vogue back then in the 1920s), did what no third-grader is allowed to do: divide by zero. By employing this mathematical crime in his equations, Einstein managed to avoid a universe that started from nothing. But when Hubble made his discovery, Einstein visited Hubble’s telescope himself to see what his equations had told him all along: the universe had a beginning. Einstein reversed his convictions in favor of his original equations. His theory of general relativity is one of the most evidenced theories of the universe, respected by all scientists and created by one of the most brilliant minds in history. It would be quite unreasonable to reject it.

Thus, scientific evidence is clear that the universe had a beginning.

Since whatever has a beginning has a cause, and the universe has a beginning, then the universe also has a cause. Remember in Einstein’s equations that the beginning of the universe brought forth the existence of not just all matter, but also space and time themselves. Thus, whatever caused the universe into being must itself be

immaterial

spaceless

timeless

Sounds like a spiritual cause, doesn’t it? In fact, these are some of the precise characteristics of the Christian God. Reason’s implications don’t stop there though: Since the universe is not eternal, but began at a finite time in the past, this cause of the universe must have made a conscious choice to bring the universe into existence. After all, if this cause was an impersonal force like gravity, it could not choose to create, but would either be always creating or never creating. Such an impersonal force cause would create an eternal universe, which has already been disproven. Thus, it would make more sense that this Cause is

a personal Being

And since the whole universe began from nothing, this Being must be “outside” the universe and be beyond the universe and nature:

supernatural – beyond nature

Thus, reasoning from effect to cause and cause to effect, we see that the universe is not all there is out there and that there is a supernatural world. Thus, these two basic tenets of atheism are found to be unreasonable, ignoring key evidences and logic accepted by scientists and everyday experience.

The Watch on the Seashore

If you strolled down a pebbled beach and found a Rolex watch straddled among the stones, would you think it formed from the wind and surf like the other round objects? Not likely, especially if you’re a reasonable man/woman. Yet atheism would have you believe otherwise.

In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins states, “All appearance to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with future purpose in his mind’s eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind … . It has no mind … . It does not plan for the future … it is the blind watchmaker” (p. 5).

Natural Selection

So, despite “all appearance to the contrary,” the complexities of nature that exceed even the intricacies of a watch have, according to atheism, come about through random natural processes. Darwin’s evolutionary natural selection has been hailed as the key to this blind watchmaking, transforming over millions of years non-living matter into the first cell into the first fish into the first mammal and into the first human. But is this really reasonable?

When we think about it, natural selection can only “select” from preexisting materials, i.e. from genetic material already in the gene pool. One of the most famous examples of natural selection is the English case of the white moth versus the black moth: The black moths were easy for predator birds to see on white tree trunks until the Industrial Revolution blackened those tree trunks with soot, making the black moths better hidden than the now-conspicuous white moths. Thus, natural selection happened as the black moths increased in population relative to the white moths as birds ate the non-camouflaged moths.

Is this moth natural selection an example of evolution? No, if by evolution you mean the molecules-to-man variety. Only the percentages of white-to-black moths changed – no new forms evolved. Natural selection only reshuffled the population numbers – nothing new arose.

Even the formation of new varieties results just from the reshuffling of genes in the genetic pool. Imagine the dog breed scenario. The original dog variety was a kind of wolf, not too extreme in any one feature, and from that single kind all the various, even crazy, dog breeds developed. From tiny Chihuahuas to huge Saint Bernard’s, from curly-coated poodles to pug-faced bulldogs – all these dog breeds came from the same original stock, which contained the genetic potential for all these varieties. These kinds can be cross-bred, which gives rise to mongrel forms that more closely reflect the original type.

Because natural selection must work within an organism’s genetic code, it is limited in its abilities. This limitedness is exhibited in artificial breeding, where human ingenuity should at least copy the evolutionary power supposedly held by nature’s chance. But repeatedly in the search for better egg production, milk production, etc., breeders have eventually slammed into walls from where no more change could be mustered (Evolution: Fossils Say No, p. 33). Whether natural or artificial, small changes can’t lead to cell-to-man evolution. Even worse, species adaption can reduce genetic information from its formerly wide variation, which then reduces the ability of the species to survive in varied environments (Refuting Evolution, pp. 35-36). As an example, the survival of a long-haired type of dog, having lost its genes for short hair in the process of adapting to a cold climate, may then be reduced if the climate warmed (Ibid., pp. 34-36). Thus, natural selection fails to generate evolution.

Mutations to the Rescue?

Truly if there was one tenet that atheism must keep in order to survive, it is large-scale evolution. It is the foundation for atheism’s worldview without supernatural intelligence or purpose. So when natural selection does not appear to be able to do the job alone, mutations were considered as the key to providing the new genetic information from which natural selection could “choose.” Through mutations, or random changes in a creature’s genetic code, natural selection weeds out the bad and keeps the strong “innovations” in nature until new kinds arise.

But to work for evolution, mutations must add new information to the gene pool that natural selection can work with. Yet mutations are “mistakes” in the genetic code; they often lose information that the genetic code once had. This loss of information cannot be the mechanism for cell-to-man evolution, which requires new information not previously in the genetic code. Even the common example of modern day evolution, bacterial resistance, often relies on mutations that lose information, such as the disabling of a certain gene. This loss of information can never be used for the rise in complexity required in major evolutionary change.

To say that mutations, which are mostly harmful, are the key to evolving more complexity is like saying that by going 99 miles south, then 1 mile north, then 99 miles south, then 1 mile north, etc., that eventually you will arrive at north before south. A species will die out from mutations before it will ever evolve higher complexity.

Thus, since mutations are mistakes, mostly harmful, and fail to add new information in the gene pool of the creature kind, is it reasonable to consider them the key to the formation of life, one of the most ubiquitous phenomena on earth? How can such an unlikely process, the accumulation of almost always harmful mutations in genes, be the creator of so much life in every corner of the planet? Again, mutations and natural selection do not provide a reasonable mechanism for evolution, and thus evolution in its molecules-to-man form is not reasonable as an explanation for the origin of life.

DNA: Information Cries for a Mind

As if evolution did not have enough problems with harmful mutations and a natural selection that can only choose among already-present genes, undirected Darwinism runs into a gigantic problem with the discovery of DNA. The singular thing about DNA is that it is not only mind-bogglingly complex, but it contains a vast amount of information.

DNA is foundational for life. This double helix is within each of our cells in our body and each cell of every life form. This microscopic code (or instruction manual) is composed of chemicals arranged in specific sequences. These arrangements form the letters of a language that communicates to a cell all the information it needs to manufacture everything for life. Human DNA contains information from our height to our personality. The DNA in a single human cell contains the information equivalent of 4,000 books! How can so much information come to exist?

The Key Is Information

DNA is like a foreign language – it looks random at first, but once you understand the “code” and “rules” of the language, all the arrangement of the letters makes sense in this order. This irregular yet patterned aspect of DNA makes DNA very unique, because it is specified information. And information of this kind is only known to result from an intelligent mind.

Dr. Werner Gitt, Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, states that one thing we have learned from scientific study is that information can only result from greater information that results from a mind and will:

“A code system is always the result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor) … It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required.”In the Beginning was Information, CLV, Bielenfeld, Germany, pp. 64–7.

“There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.” (p. 79)

Thus, chance is unable to account for the information in DNA. This leaves the only reasonable option, design. Someone’s mind had to intentionally design DNA so the pattern makes sense and can function.

How reasonable is the atheist’s position that DNA – with the informational content of 4,000 books – formed by chance? We would literally laugh at anyone who speculated that the Encyclopedia Britannica arose from many years of copying errors in an abandoned library thousands of years ago – so why should we consider that DNA, the most complex, informationally rich entity we know of, just came to be without a mind and without a purpose?

How Can Anyone Believe This?

You may start asking why anyone would believe DNA could evolve, but the problem lies in that evolution became popular among scientists long before DNA or even the structure of cells was known. Did you know that during Darwin’s time, the cell was considered a simple “blob” of plasma? In the minds of scientists who had no knowledge of the hidden mysteries of the microscopic world, the cell was just a bunch of jelly that could easily arise by chance in an ancient pond. If one thinks about life’s origin that way, then it can appear reasonable that life arose by chance.

Yet once the microscopic world was opened to the eyes of the scientist, unparalleled complexity just kept getting more mind-numbing every day. Now cells are actually compared to cities in complexity – can you imagine a cellular city! That is so super complex – so how can that form by chance? The list of nature’s intricate marvels can go on nearly to infinity, but these microscopic examples themselves are enough.

So we have super-complex cells, the so-called “simple” forms of life, and super-complex and information-rich DNA, and both these entities, by themselves, reveal how utterly unreasonable atheism is in explaining the natural world. Even though science has been entrenched in undirected evolution for more than a century, many scientists are starting to buck the peer pressure and voice their conviction in an intelligent Designer of life. Thus, natural selection, mutation, DNA, and cells all testify to the logical and scientific hurdles that face purposeless, mindless processes as the key to life.

Rather, it makes better sense that an intelligent Creator began the universe, created life in all its complexity, and outfitted this life with the ability to adapt to varying environments. This is where natural selection comes into play – it acts not as a tool of limitless evolution, but as a built-in, limited variation mechanism within a creature’s population that helps the species survive and thrive in its surroundings.

But, as recorded in the Christian narrative, the highest of God’s creatures did wrong and all creation fell from glory to corruption. Harmful mutations entered the scene and polluted the complexity, yet the beauty of the original can still be seen. Thus, disorder increasing among an incredibly ordered creation is what we see now and what we would expect from the Biblical creation account. Atheism and evolution expect order to rise from disorder and complexity to rise from simplicity, which is not what we usually see in the natural world.

Thus, though atheism claims to be reasonable and scientific, it fails in both realms.

The Bible: Just Follow the Evidence

Atheism brushes aside the Bible as a collection of myths and unreliable reports. But is this position reasonable? It may seem so until one looks at the evidence! Even though the Bible has been copied from copies for thousands of years, we have compelling evidence that those copies are reliable.

The Old Testament

Did you know that before 1947, the Old Testament we have, the farthest it could be traced in the copies, was around the tenth century? It’s called the Masoretic Text which the Jews preserved. Scholars argued that we couldn’t know if the Old Testament was reliable before the tenth century.

But in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and many Old Testament books are among the scrolls. These scrolls are dated from 100 years before the time of Christ to the time of Christ. That is 1000 years earlier than the tenth century Old Testament Jewish copies, which had been before these discoveries the earliest copies we had of the Old Testament!

And do you know what was found? The Old Testament books written 1000 years earlier were virtually identical with the Old Testament books of the tenth century! Scholar Gleason Archer states,

“For example, even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumrun Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A.D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling. They do not affect the message of revelation in the slightest” (qtd. in Josh McDowell, Evidence for Christianity: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith, p. 104).

Burrows makes further fascinating note:

“Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word “light,” which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly. . . . Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission – and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage” (qtd. in Josh McDowell, Evidence for Christianity: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith, p. 115).

These differences are minuscule – absolutely minuscule!

Do you know why there were so few differences? Because the Jews as God’s people had a very careful way of copying, even counting every letter in the most painstaking way of copying. Sir Frederick Kenyon explains:

“The Masoretes [Jewish scholars of the 6th to 10th centuries) undertook a number of calculations which do not enter into the ordinary sphere of textual criticism. They numbered the verses, words, and letters of every [Biblical] book. They calculated the middle word and the middle letter of each. They enumerated verses which contained all the letters of the alphabet, or a certain number of them. These trivialities, as we may rightly consider them, had yet the effect of securing minute attention to the precise transmission of the text” (qtd. in Josh McDowell, Evidence for Christianity: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith, p. 112).

Thus they preserved the Bible like no other book. God made provision for the safe copying of His Word. With such precise copying and the proof of precise copies a thousand years apart from our next oldest ones, is it reasonable to doubt the reliability of the Old Testament?

The New Testament

And besides the Old Testament, we have so many manuscripts of the New Testament that we can cross-reference them to see if they have differences. We have copies dating to the 2nd century – that is so close to the time of Christ! Most ancient works have their surviving copies 1000 later than the originals – but the Bible has its copies only 250 years!

Date of Gospels

New discoveries show that the Gospels were very early.

A newly-discovered portion of John’s Gospel (considered to be the last Gospel written) was dated as having been copied in A.D. 130. Since this copy of John was located in Egypt, which is quite far away from where John’s Gospel was written (Asia Minor), the original Gospel of John must be even older if this early copy made it all the way to Egypt (McDowell p. 66).

Modern scholarship is concluding that the Gospels were written much earlier than previously thought. William Albright, one of the greatest Biblical archaeologists, says the Gospels can’t be dated any later than A.D. 80, which means that the gap between Jesus’ death (A.D. 30s) and the last Gospel written is 50 years, not 60-140 years.

Actually, the late 60-140-year range was more credible during the 19th century, for recent manuscript discoveries after that time are closing the gap between older manuscripts and the time when the gospels were written.

Even liberal scholars are revising their dates of the New Testament to be much earlier than they claimed before. One formerly-skeptical scholar, Dr. John A. T. Robinson, concluded from his research (documented in Redating the New Testament) that all the New Testament, including the Gospels, was written before Jerusalem’s fall in A.D. 70. Since Jesus died around the A.D. 30s, then if all the New Testament was written at the latest before A.D. 70., then there is at most 40 years between the latest New Testament book and the events of Jesus’ life. Forty years is well within the generation that was living in Jesus’ time – and this 40-year gap would only be for the last books. Many were written much earlier.

Myth Formation?

This 40-year gap makes myth-making inconceivable, as William Lane Craig states in a comparison of Roman historians and the New Testament:

“According to Professor Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman history are usually biased and removed at least one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence what really happened. He chastises NT critics for not realizing what invaluable sources they have in the gospels. The writings of Herodotus furnish a test case for the rate of legendary accumulation, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts.” – “Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Truth 1 (1985): 89-95.

New Testament Vs. Ancient Writings

Manuscripts, like the fragment of John’s Gospel, reveal that the New Testament is profoundly reliable, especially compared to all other ancient works. The earliest discovered copies of the Gospels are 50+ to 225 years later than the original writings (McDowell p. 65).

Just compare that to Caesar’s Gallic Wars, written in 100-44 B.C., whose earliest copy is dated A.D. 900. That is basically a 1000-year gap between copy and original!

And nearly every other ancient writing is like this: the time between the original writing and the copies we have discovered hovers around 1000 years, with Homer’s writings having a “small” gap of 400 years between original and copy while Herodotus’s writings having a huge gap of 1,350 years. Yet historians see these ancient works as reliable, despite the hundreds of years between the original writing and the copies.

Surely the New Testament, with only a gap of 50-225 years, outshines every secular writing as a trustworthy source.

Not only do all other ancient writings besides the New Testament have huge time gaps between the original writing and our remaining copies, but the copies we do have are very few. The fewer the existing copies, the more likely that they had been tampered with and do not reflect the originals. We have only . . .

10 copies of Caesar’s Gallic Wars

7 copies of Pliny’s Natural History

8 copies of Herodotus’s History

643 copies of Homer’s Iliad

But the New Testament has

24,970 copies

How could the New Testament be forged, when so many copies exist? Note: above list of manuscript copies from Evidence for Christianity, by McDowell, p. 65.

Tampered Gospels?

With so many manuscripts in existence, it is extremely hard to conceive that people had the ability to change the Gospels or other books in the New Testament to suit their own beliefs. At the very beginning, Christianity was a missionary faith, and so the New Testament was translated into many languages, such as Syriac and Arabic. With the New Testament being translated and copied far and wide to distant lands, how could a forger gather each manuscript and make changes?

That would be equivalent to a modern forger gathering all the letters, articles, and writings about Abraham Lincoln and changing significant portions for his own beliefs – without letting anyone suspect his actions. The writings on Abraham Lincoln are mostly in one language, so the analogy does not even pose the greater problem of the different languages the New Testament was translated into soon after Christianity began.

One fact reveals that the New Testament hasn’t been changed significantly since first written (“Hasn’t the Bible been rewritten so many times that we can’t trust it anymore?” by Matt Slick, carm.org):

99.5% of the material in our current copies of the New Testament agree with each other

The 0.5% of differences are mostly spelling differences or minor word variants, like substituting “Christ Jesus” for “Jesus Christ”; no major Christian doctrine is harmed

Since our copies of the New Testament agree with each other 99.5%, a forger would need to change thousands of manuscripts identically, an absurd task. John Warwick Montgomery notes that “to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament” (qtd in McDowell p. 61).

This is unbelievable – no other ancient work is as well attested to in manuscript number of manuscript dates. And many Bible students, in comparing the vast number of manuscripts with each other, have come away surprised how similar they are to one another! Thus, the Bible is not corrupted – and the textual evidence makes this very clear. When it comes to reason and evidence, atheism has no ground to stand and accuse the Bible of mythology.

The Most Evidenced Event in Ancient History

Atheism certainly considers the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be a most unreasonable belief. Yet the circumstances surrounding this amazing event in history force one to realize that the resurrection is the only reasonable explanation.

Just take a look at each of these skeptical men:

Dr. Simon Greenleaf: law professor who raised Harvard Law School to preeminence

He doubted the resurrection

Dr. Frank Morris, journalist and lawyer

He set out to write a book refuting the resurrection

C.S. Lewis, expert in Medieval and Renaissance literature

He thought Christians “to be wrong” and Jesus’ resurrection a legend

Josh McDowell, scholar and speaker to more than 650 universities worldwide

He ridiculed Christians and thought the resurrection “intellectual suicide.”

Each man held that Jesus’ resurrection was fiction. But they also share another thing in common – they all investigated the historical and legal evidence for the resurrection and changed their minds. Many other men of intellect have examined the evidence and also reversed their convictions in favor of the resurrection. What is this evidence that changed them so drastically?

First, the evidence of the reliability of the New Testament mentioned before does not have to be repeated here. The New Testament has been shown to conclusively represent the actual original documents, and thus we can rely on them as accurate descriptions of Jesus’ life. Since the New Testament was written within only a few decades after Jesus’ death, we can know that Jesus is not just some myth created centuries after the fact.

Living Eyewitnesses

The factor that settles Jesus of Nazareth beyond all myth is witness testimony. The New Testament reminds its readers that the miracles and words of Jesus had “not been done in a corner” (Acts 26:26). In front of crowds, Jesus gave sight to the blind (Matt. 9:27-30; 21:14), healed (Luke 7:21; Matt. 8:2-3), fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes (Matt. 14:15-21), raised the dead (John 11:1-45), etc. The disciples wrote that this same Jesus was crucified, buried, and arose from the grave on the third day (Matt. 27-28; Mark 15-16; Luke 23-24; John 19-20). They were calling, “Check the tomb. He’s not there!” Because the New Testament was written within the lifetimes of the witnesses to these events, anything the disciples wrote could be tested against the memories of countless thousands.

Many of these thousands believed. The New Testament was preached far and wide and translated into many languages (Jeffrey, Signature of God, p. 88). Copies multiplied, making impossible any forgery, as shown by illustration (Ibid., pp. 88-89): Suppose a forger in the 1990s wanted to claim that John F. Kennedy rose from the dead after his assassination. This forger would have to gather all the countless writings about JFK, hoping none would suspect any change, even the millions who lived during JFK’s life. This is just absurd. The fact that Christianity was born in Jerusalem, outside whose gates Jesus was crucified, and then rapidly spread to the entire Roman Empire testifies that many in that generation saw the works of Jesus as true history, not myth (McDowell, Resurrection Factor, pp. 106-107).

Hostile Testimony

Even the Jewish religious leaders, who hated Jesus for exposing their hypocrisy, couldn’t deny His empty tomb. Rather, they accused His disciples of stealing His body in an attempt to make Jesus’ resurrection prophecy come true (Matt. 27:62-64; 28:11-13).

Die for a Known Lie?

Yet if the disciples really stole Jesus’ body, why did they die for their own lie? These disciples had displayed cowardice when fleeing Jesus during His arrest and trials, but after claiming to see Him alive, they passionately preached His resurrection while suffering intense persecution from Jews and Romans. Nearly all the disciples died for preaching a risen Christ, yet none renounced Him (McDowell, Resurrection Factor, p. 94). Would anyone live a persecuted life and die for his own fabrication? Many religious fanatics have died for false beliefs, but each could not objectively know that their beliefs were true. Only the disciples of all martyrs had the unique opportunity to know if their beliefs were true – because they knew if they had seen Jesus alive. Even Apostle Paul, a persecutor of Christians, and James the brother of Jesus, skeptic of Jesus during His ministry, later believed after His resurrection and died for their faith. They died willingly, for they knew the truth.

Just Visions?

Did Jesus’ disciples just hallucinate His resurrection? Yet if Jesus appeared in their minds only, why did the Jewish leaders imply an empty tomb by claiming the body was stolen (Matt. 28:11-13)? How could thousands of Jews in Jerusalem convert to Christianity during the first sermon (Acts 2) when they easily could walk to Joseph’s tomb and verify if it was truly empty (McDowell, Resurrection Factor, pp. 106-107)? Many converts were persecuted, so seeing the empty tomb was vital (Ibid., p. 107).

The hallucination doesn’t fit what the disciples saw.

People can’t have the same hallucination at the same time, since each vision depends on an individual’s unique experience (Ibid., p. 84). In contrast, at one point five hundred individuals saw or talked with Jesus (John 20:11-18; I Corinthians 15:6). Unlike a couple drug addicts, each high and having a different hallucination, each person saw the same Jesus. Some even ate with Him (John 21) or touched His wounds (John 20:24-28); what kind of vision allows that? Their accounts are detailed, just as psychologists expect of someone seeing reality (McDowell, Resurrection Factor, p. 84). Also, seeing a false image requires a person to expect to see it (Ibid., pp. 85-86). Jesus’ followers were last to expect that Jesus had risen (Ibid., p. 86). The women brought spices to anoint His body, expecting His body dead. The disciples had fled their Master at His arrest and trial (Mark 14:50), expecting Him to be dead.

Not Really Dead?

Did Jesus only faint on the cross, reviving in the tomb’s cool air? Maybe His disciples mistakingly concluded He had resurrected. Yet this theory ignores the fatal brutality of crucifixion, as described by Dr. Alexander Metherell, Ph.D., (qtd in Strobel, Case for Easter, pp. 12-24):

(1) a Roman whipping that stripped off the flesh to the bowels, causing severe blood loss and shock

(2) an arduous walk to execution carrying the cross

(3) the nails through sensitive nerves in wrists and feet

(4) the hanging from the cross, pressuring the chest so that Jesus had to push Himself up continually in order to exhale, until exhaustion and then suffocation set in

(5) cardiac arrest from shock and slow suffocation

(6) the spear thrust into Jesus’ side, which let out much blood and water from a ruptured heart.

How can anyone survive this ordeal? Many prisoners died at the beating stage. Jesus couldn’t even “play dead,” for none can pretend to stop breathing for long as the lungs were pressured in the hanging position. As Dr. Metherell declares, Jesus couldn’t survive it.

The Greatest Testimony

But the greatest testimony against the reviving theory are the disciples (McDowell, Resurrection Factor, pp. 98-99). Just imagine: Jesus had to (1) revive, (2) unwrap Himself from 100 lbs. of burial cloth, (3) roll the stone away, and (4) escape the guards. As the anti-Christian theologian David Strauss admitted, this weakened, mutilated Jesus could never persuade His hopeless, cowardly disciples that He rose in a new, glorified body. Yet the disciples did preach from Jerusalem to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire that Jesus is Conquerer of death because they actually saw their Lord risen in a perfect new body.

The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is not only the pivotal event of history, but a life transformer. Only the resurrection explains Christianity’s massive growth in the very city of Jesus’ crucifixion. Because Jesus rose, He is who He claimed to be, the Christ, the Son of God, the Creator indwelling flesh to pay the penalty for men’s sins and save them. Because He conquered death, those who believe will rise from death to life eternal to be with God in His heavenly kingdom. Please believe in Jesus today as your Savior and your Lord. There is nothing more reasonable.

As we have seen, atheism cannot provide a more reasonable explanation in these subjects. From the origin of the universe to the events of Jesus and His disciples, only Christianity explains these facts of science and history in a reasonable, compelling manner. Though those at the Reason Rally may think otherwise, reason is Christianity’s friend time and again. If you want to choose reason, choose Christ.

Now for geology and paleontology: This is one of my favorite areas of evidence, the earth and fossils, since I am continually amazed how well the Bible explains them through the global flood of Noah’s day. The fossils worldwide attest to a watery catastrophe of great proportions. There are vast fossil graveyards filled with mangled fossils of animals. There are thousands of fishes buried in the very act of swallowing smaller fishes, and there are fishes with smaller fishes still inside their bellies – these amazing fossils point to rapid, rather than slow, burial of the fish. Rapid burial would be characteristic of a global flood catastrophe.

Polystrate Fossils

One fascinating evidence of rapid burial is that we sometimes find fossilized tree trunks and other large fossils SPANNING across several rock layers – these are called polystrate fossils. Fossils are found in layered sedimentary rocks, and evolutionists have traditionally claimed that each layer was laid down over millions of years. But how could a layer of sediment accumulate over such a vast time while a log sticks out of it, waiting for more layers to cover it millions of years into the future? The log would rot away! Even within 200 years, the log would rot in such an uncovered position. Thus, all the layers through which the log traverses must have been laid down rapidly enough that the log did not rot while uncovered.

Scientists Michael J. Oard and Hank Giesecke (“Polystrate Fossils Require Rapid Deposition” http://www.creationresearch.org/) even visited Alaska and observed some polystrate logs that spanned through multiple coal layers! Now evolutionists may claim an occasional local catastrophe, but they believe firmly that coal formed over eons of millions of years. They do not allow local catastrophes when it comes to coal, especially since coal layers often span huge areas of earth, not just local areas. So when these scientists photographed and studied these polystrate logs that spanned several coal layers, this just showed them that these coal layers were formed rapidly!

This is exactly what would happen in a catastrophe such as the global flood. Most sedimentary layers in the world are known by secular scientists to have been laid down by water, even moving water. Such logs would have been uprooted and dumped into the watery sediment, just as a smaller-scale flood would do today. The preflood world had vast forests, so when these forests were ripped up, they gathered into vegetation mats that were then later buried and compressed into coal and oil, forming vast layers.

Missing Millions

Not only do fossils exhibit rapid burial in a watery catastrophe (since most sedimentary layers are laid down by water), fossils also fail to exhibit the millions of transitional forms that evolution is supposed to have produced through billions of years. I’m not talking about a few questionable examples – I’m saying that the fossil record, if evolution happened, should be chock-full of intermediate forms from all walks of animal and plant life. Yet leading evolutionists privately admit to the utter lack of true, uncontested transitional forms in the fossil record:

One leading paleontologist, Dr. Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History had written a book called Evolution that did not include any intermediate forms. He was asked why he failed to include any. He stated in a letter: “I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . . . Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say that there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument” (Copy of letter, dated 10 April 1979, from Patterson to Sunderland).

That is a leading palaeontologist saying that there are no uncontested transitional forms – at all! There is not one which he could include in his book about evolution – and he is an evolutionary scientist. At least he is honest. Some scientists try pointing to archeopteryx, the evolutionary horse sequence, or ape-men, but these have serious problems with being classed as transitional forms. I already talked about their problems briefly in my post “Does Science Debunk God?”. If you wonder if these fossils are transitional, remember that this leading palaeontologist already did not include them in his book on evolution. And he even referenced other palaeontologists like him who also knew there were no uncontested transitional forms.

If evolution is true, then the fossil record should contain millions – literally millions – of transitional forms. But even leading evolutionists cannot even find one for which they can make a “watertight argument.” How can evolution be true with such a lack of evidence?

But What About Evolution’s Order in the Fossil Record?

Some may point out the ascending order of less complex to more complex creatures in the fossil record, with the so-called simplest creatures at the bottom and the more advanced at the top of the rock layers. They say this is evidence for evolutionary development.

But in actuality, a whole different process has been proven through experiment to produce this same order. A curious phenomenon called liquefaction is known to affect water-saturated sediments, often occurring in disruptive events like earthquakes. Liquefaction helped create today’s layered rocks and fossil record. This geological process occurs when water is forced to flow upward through particles like sand. Quicksand is a simple example. Liquefaction sorts different sized particles into different layers. Worldwide sorting during the flood formed the geologic column and mile-thick sedimentary layers. Animals and plants were sorted according to their buoyancy in water. One experimental study by Loma Linda University even discovered the order of settling of dead animals: First the amphibian, then reptile, then mammal, and finally bird. The bird was the last to settle, showing that it would be relatively high up the resulting fossil record, while the amphibian settled first, so it would be lowest, just like we see in the fossil record. This is the general order of fossils in the geologic column and is often attributed to evolution, but in actuality evolution had no part in this remarkable order.

Thus, a global flood is capable of producing this order, and taking in other evidences, such as rapid burial of fossils and fossils spanning several sedimentary layers, a global flood fits the evidence much better than evolution. Evolution’s own lack of huge numbers of transitional forms in the fossil record also makes it a less reasonable hypothesis. Thus, geology and paleontology give compelling evidence for the truthfulness of God’s Word in the Bible.

In a discussion on the blog post “Does Science Debunk God?” I got into a big conversation about DNA and evidences for God’s existence and the Bible’s trustworthiness. I spent so much time replying and researching good evidences that I figured I should share these thoughts in more than the comment section! So I will be posting some of what I wrote, edited slightly, for your benefit to read here. This first one is about “The Mystery of DNA: Does DNA Point to God?”

DNA is foundational for life. This double helix is within each of our cells in our body and each cell of every life form. This microscopic code (or instruction manual) is composed of chemicals arranged in specific sequences. These arrangements form the letters of a language that communicates to a cell all the information it needs to manufacture everything for life. The DNA in a single human cell contains the information equivalent of 4,000 books! How did DNA come to exist?

Three Possibilities

When we see an object, we can conclude it formed in one of three ways: by chance, by necessity, or by design.

Choice 1: By Chance

By chance means that the parts came about randomly, like leaves clustered in a ditch from the wind. Or a coin flipping. The more complex and delicate the design, the less likely it formed by chance. A computer, for example, would not be expected to form by chance, since random happenings do not generate the specific connections we see in a computer.

Choice 2: By Necessity

By necessity means that the laws in nature decree that something will take place. For example, warm waters over the Atlantic, the trade winds blowing to the US eastern sea board, the Coriolis effect, and other tropical phenomena cause a hurricane to form. Or the characteristics of atoms and the number of their electrons cause certain crystals to form. Both hurricanes and crystals have design, but this design is repetitive. The design is not simple, but it repeats in an ABCD, ABCD, ABCD manner – the same design over and over again. Such repetitive design is a characteristic effect from a relentless cause such as nature’s laws. Some scientists are trying to find a “law” in nature that created DNA, but that is quite contrary to the design of DNA.

Choice 3: By Design

DNA has an irregular design. It is one of the most fascinating objects in nature because of this non-repeating pattern. The pattern appears random at first. The arrangements of the different chemicals in DNA does not repeat ABCD, ABCD, ABCD, like the atomic structure of a crystal. Rather, the four DNA chemicals are arranged in non-repetitive patterns, like GHR TYGREF BUYI. DNA is actually much more complex, because its “random” pattern actually conforms to a “language code” that makes perfect sense of the letters in DNA. For example, once the code is known, the above sequence may mean LET TYLER PLAY.

Cutting Choices 1 & 2

Since the pattern does not repeat, the necessity of natural law is powerless to create it, because necessity produces repetition. Chance has an even more woebegone probability of producing this unrepeated pattern, since mindless chance does not know about the higher code that directs the non-repeating pattern and makes sense of this pattern. Without knowing the higher code, the only thing created would be chaos.

The Key Is Information

DNA is like a foreign language – it looks random at first, but once you understand the “code” and “rules” of the language, all the arrangement of the letters makes sense in this order. This irregular yet patterned aspect of DNA makes DNA very unique, because it is specified information. And information of this kind is only known to result from an intelligent mind.

Dr. Werner Gitt, Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, states that one thing we have learned from scientific study is that information can only result from greater information that results from a mind and will:

“No Known Natural Law”

“A code system is always the result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor) … It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required.”In the Beginning was Information, CLV, Bielenfeld, Germany, pp. 64–7.

“There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.” (p. 79)

Thus, chance and necessity are unable to account for the information in DNA. This leaves the third option, design. Someone’s mind had to intentionally design DNA so the pattern makes sense and can function.

The Search Begins . . .

Now, who could this higher mind be? DNA is exceedingly complex, far exceeding the complexity of any computer code or other information that mere human minds can create. Not even the most brilliant scientists can create DNA. So whatever mind created DNA, it is a mind far superior to ours.

Option 1: Aliens?

Maybe aliens gave our planet life, including DNA? Some have proposed it in all seriousness. Yet it is not the most reasonable choice, since we have very little evidence that such higher life forms exist in outer space. The most evidence for life outside earth is bacteria in Mars, but that is far from super-intelligent extraterrestrials. Besides, these hypothetical life forms would themselves have to have some information code similar to DNA within their own cells. All life, especially of the higher orders, that we have ever experienced contains DNA, so it is only reasonable to say that DNA or something like it is integral to life. If extraterrestrials created DNA on earth, who created theirs? The problem is only pushed farther back in the mists of time. So who created it?

Option 2: The Life Force

Is the Life Force of pantheistic religions like Hinduism the cause of DNA? Not likely, since this Life Force is supposed to be impersonal – which means it has no will of its own. Such a force would be similar to nature’s laws, another “necessity” unable to create anything except repetitious designs, like the law of karma. But since DNA is an unrepeated pattern of information, an impersonal life force is truly unlikely as its source.

Option 3: A Creator

From a process of elimination, we have reduced the possibilities greatly. From thinking through this process of elimination, here are some traits of DNA’s Creator:

1. This Creator must be super-intelligent, since DNA is super-complex

2. This Creator must be very powerful in order to bring elements together and make DNA from raw materials.

3. This Creator must have the ability to see things we cannot, such as the microscopic world, yet also have the wisdom to know how to make DNA work for life in the macroscopic world.

4. This Creator must have a will and not just be pure law or necessity, since DNA has a non-repeating pattern.

5. This Creator must not be composed of DNA, since that is the very thing we are trying to explain. If whoever made DNA has no DNA, then this mind and will is much different from all life as we know it. Since all flesh has DNA, this being appears not to be made of flesh.

6. This Creator cares about life, since DNA is key to life.

Who is this Creator?

Now, where can I find a super-intelligent, super-powerful, all-seeing, wise, conscious, and non-physical Creator who has a keen interest in life on this planet? Well, every single human society since antiquity already claims that such a being exists: God. Isn’t it strange that all human societies have the consciousness of a being they cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or feel? Yet DNA shows that this kind of being is just what is required for DNA’s very existence! This is no coincidence.

We Knew It All Along

The Creator of DNA put within our consciousness (in our DNA!) that He exists and can be known. No other cause can adequately explain how the non-repeating, incredibly complex information in DNA came into existence. Even the philosopher Antony Flew, the most renown atheist of the twentieth century, made a 180 and admitted near the end of his life that God must exist because of DNA. The discovery of DNA was one of the most pertinent reasons for this atheist’s turnaround.

Thus, DNA is powerful evidence that God exists just as these words right here are evidence that a person exists behind them. These words couldn’t write themselves, even over millions of years, because they do not mean anything in themselves, but have meaning only within the higher code, or language, they belong in. The physics that make these words possible for you to see – the ink, paper, printer – cannot make the words for the simple reason that information is not part of the physical world. The same information could be written with a pencil or even with squirts of lemon juice. Thus, the natural laws of the physical world have nothing to do with information. Physical laws can only work with the information encoded within it. But it can’t create any new information, like DNA. That requires, as Dr. Werner Gitt concludes, a mind behind the matter. And God is the only mind that qualifies as capable of creating DNA.

With the rise of technology and the explanation of all nature through science and evolution, is God out of a job? Is faith no longer reasonable? What does the scientific evidence say? Today, fascinating discoveries in science are reopening the question of God.

Let’s begin with a disclaimer: No side can “prove” anything absolutely. We must live day-to-day believing things based on probability. For example, the weatherman may say that there’s a 60% chance of rain tomorrow. Though it’s not a certainty, we probably would bring an umbrella just in case. Or what about race horse betting? Perhaps there’s a 1 in 10 chance that Blue Bailey is a winner? Or maybe a 1 in 100 chance? Would you bet your money on those odds?

So what is the chance that life in all its complexity could form without the influence of an intelligent, powerful Being named God?

Let’s start basic: What are the odds that one protein molecule of the simplest bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium, formed by chance processes? A protein is made of various parts; how likely did these parts join randomly? Dr. Dwain Ford, former professor of chemistry, puts the odds at 1 in 10 with 451 zeros after 10! Compare that with the number of carbon atoms that could fill the whole earth: 1 in 10 with 50 zeros after 10 (In Six Days, p. 139). That’s not even close to 1 in 10 with 451 zeros! Not even the most insane soul at the race-track would bet on such astronomically low odds. Even the simplest life is complex. Yet that’s only the odds of a single protein molecule forming randomly; a single cell requires thousands of proteins. And cells are much simpler than snails, birds, or humans. Thus, the odds are very high that life was created not by chance, but by an intelligent God. It’s as close to certainty as you can get.

Yet if God created life, who created God?

Here’s some helpful logic:

1. Whatever has a beginning has a cause.

2. The universe has a beginning.

3. Thus, it has a cause.

God has no beginning. Thus, He has no cause.

We all must believe in something that has always existed, either God or the universe. If the universe has no beginning, then it doesn’t need a Creator for its cause. But even atheistic scientists say that the universe (including matter, space, and time) had a beginning. Thus, both atheists and theists, though disagreeing on many points, agree that the universe had a beginning! It couldn’t have created itself, since it would have had to exist before it existed! Thus, it needed a Creator to come into existence. God, however, is eternal and never “began to exist,” so He doesn’t need a Creator.

Okay, so God began it all. But don’t scientists believe that evolution is responsible for life?

Let’s consider DNA, the informational foundation of life. This microscopic code (or instruction manual) within a cell is composed of certain chemicals arranged in specific sequences. These arrangements form the letters of a language that communicates to a cell all the information it needs to manufacture everything for life. The DNA in a single human cell contains the information equivalent of 4,000 books! Can evolution explain this vast amount of information?

A molecular biologist named Sam (apparently he didn’t want to give his surname) said some remarkable statements about DNA in an interview (“The Biologist” p. 2, qtd. in In the Beginning by Walt Brown, p. 16):

Biologist: “I’m a bit like an editor, trying to find a spelling mistake inside a document larger than four complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. Seventy volumes, thousands and thousands of pages of small print words”. . . . .

Interviewer (George Caylor): “Do you believe that the information evolved?”

Biologist: “George, nobody I know in my profession truly believes it evolved. It was engineered by ‘genius beyond genius,’ and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book. Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise. A bit like Neil Armstrong believing the moon is made of green cheese. He’s been there!”

Interviewer: “Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?”

Biologist: “No. It all just evolved.”

Interviewer: “What? You just told me – ?”

Biologist: “Just stop right there. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold on to two insanities at all times. One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself. Two, it would be insane to say you don’t believe in evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures – everything would stop. I’d be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn’t earn a decent living.”

That interview helps explain why many scientists, though seeing for themselves much evidence for a Creator, still believe in evolution.

But if God created the universe and life, wouldn’t we have to accept miracles?

Skeptics claim believing in miracles is unreasonable. But is it reasonable to believe that the information in DNA, the equivalent of 4,000 books, arose by chance? This contradicts everything known about complex informa-tion: It’s always the product of an intelligent mind. Not even the most unreasonable person would believe that simpler forms of information such as computer code, encyclopedias, or even grocery lists formed without an intelligent mind, so why should DNA be the exception?

If DNA formed by chance, it would be a “secular” miracle even more incredible than religious miracles.

Why? Because it wouldn’t have the benefit of a powerful God to explain it. Jesus’ resurrection is more credible than DNA arising by chance, because a powerful God caused the resurrection, while evolution says no intelligent being caused DNA to exist.

So a miracle caused by God is a more reasonable explanation than a miracle caused by nothing. A miracle of God would not be contrary to scientific law, since God created the scientific laws in the first place when He set up the universe. So He is perfectly capable of intervening in His natural laws to cause a supernatural outcome for His own purpose.

But isn’t evolution the only legitimate science?

Evolution doesn’t have a monopoly on science. One vital part of science is the ability to make predictions that either confirm or refute a theory. Creation scientists have made predictions that have come true. Dr. Walt Brown, an MIT-graduate mechanical engineer, devised a flood theory that posited that a salty water chamber once encircled the earth 10 miles underground. In 1980 he predicted that traces of this water were under major mountains. Around 2001, evidence of this salt water was found under the Tibetan Plateau, which is beside the Himalayan Mountains (In the Beginning, p. 125). Brown published (p. 332) a list of 39 predictions. This ability to test creation theory shows that it is true science.

Many scientists are questioning evolution

Many books critical of evolution aren’t even written from a religious viewpoint, such as The Great Evolution Mystery; Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth; and Darwin Retried. Science Digest reports that “Scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities… Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science” (Larry Hatfield, “Educators Against Darwin,” Science Digest Special (Winter 1979), pp. 94-96. qtd in ChristianAnswers.net). Many scientists are challenging evolution in light of its inadequacies.

5 common arguments for evolution that don’t stand up to scrutiny:

1. Mutations and natural selection

Natural selection is “survival of the fittest.” Through mutations, or random changes in a creature’s genetic code, natural selection weeds out the bad and keeps the strong “innovations” in nature until new kinds evolve. But to work for evolution, mutations must add new information to the gene pool that natural selection can work with. Yet mutations are “mistakes” in the genetic code; they often lose information that the genetic code once had. This loss of information cannot be the mechanism for cell-to-man evolution, which requires new information not previously in the genetic code. Even the common example of modern day evolution, bacterial resistance, often relies on mutations that lose information, such as the disabling of a certain gene. This loss of information can never be used for the rise in complexity required in major evolutionary change.

To say that mutations, which are mostly harmful, are the key to evolving more complexity is like saying that by going 99 miles south, then 1 mile north, then 99 miles south, then 1 mile north, etc., that eventually you will arrive at north before south. A species will die out from mutations before it will ever evolve higher complexity.

Because natural selection must work within an organism’s genetic code, it is limited in its abilities. This limitedness is exhibited in artificial breeding, where human ingenuity should at least copy the evolutionary power supposedly held by nature’s chance. But repeatedly in the search for better egg production, milk production, etc., breeders have eventually slammed into walls from where no more change could be mustered (Evolution: Fossils Say No, p. 33). Whether natural or artificial, small changes can’t lead to cell-to-man evolution. Even worse, species adaption can reduce genetic information from its formerly wide variation, which then reduces the ability of the species to survive in varied environments (Refuting Evolution, pp. 35-36). As an example, the survival of a long-haired type of dog, having lost its genes for short hair in the process of adapting to a cold climate, may then be reduced if the climate warmed (Ibid., pp. 34-36). Thus, neither natural selection nor mutation can lead to upward evolving.

2. Darwin’s Tree of Life

This tree shows many transitional forms (creatures evolving into different kinds) leading up to modern species. If this tree is real, millions of transitional fossils should exist. But the actual fossils are starkly absent, as admitted by evolutionists Dr. David Raup, Dr. Colin Patterson, and Stephen Jay Gould (In the Beginning, pp. 62-63). Eminent evolutionist Gould admitted:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” (“Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, Vol. 86 May 1977 p. 14 qtd. in In the Beginning p. 63.)

3. Archaeopteryx and other “missing links”

Despite Darwin’s prediction of countless transitional fossils (Origin of Species, p. 163), only a few questionable “missing links” have been unearthed:

Archaeopteryx: It’s not a half-bird, half-reptile, as even evolutionist Alan Feduccia admits: “It’s a bird, a perching bird.” It has modern bird feathers and other features of modern birds. Its teeth do not say anything about reptilian ancestry, since some reptiles don’t have teeth while some birds (now extinct) did have teeth.

The North American horse series: This series reverses in South America: the fossil of a more “primitive” horse was discovered in rock above the more “advanced” horse. Since creatures are supposed to become more complex the higher they are in the fossil record, this would be “devolution.” Yet the horse series itself consists mostly of horse varieties that are no more evolved from each other than are today’s horse breeds. Only the first in the series isn’t a horse but another animal, so it shouldn’t be in the series (Refuting Evolution by Jonathan Sarfati, p. 133).

Ape-men: Many of these fossils are fragmentary and hard to interpret. One “ape-man” called Nebraska Man was based on just one tooth, later discovered to belong to a pig. Other “ape-men” are based on bone fragments that are only a fraction of the whole body. Some alleged ape-men were later discovered to be just apes, while others were reclassified as true man. Neanderthal man, for example, was a true human whose fossils sometimes exhibited bone disease, giving the false impression that he stooped like an ape-man.

4. The similarity of Haeckel’s embryos

Actually, evolutionists have known for years that Haeckel’s embryos, a common sight in textbooks, are frauds. Haeckel doctored his embryo drawings to look very similar in an attempt to prove that embryos grow according to evolutionary descent. Now it’s known that embryos of different animals look very different from each other, even at the beginning stages.

5. The Miller-Urey experiment’s creation of amino acids, the simplest elements of life

Textbooks hail this experiment as evidence that life formed by chance. But only amino acids were made, which are very basic elements that compose proteins, the structure of cells. To say that life can form randomly because amino acids form randomly is like saying if bricks can form randomly, then buildings can, too. A simple protein requires 100-150 amino acids in a specific sequence, much too specific for chance to create. Also, this experiment used a model of earth’s early environment that’s no longer accepted by scientists, so the experiment is no longer valid.

Thus, science doesn’t debunk God. Rather, science affirms God’s existence. I can say many more things about how science is a witness to God and His Word:

. . . the scientific evidence for the Genesis flood, such as the 1,000s of mangled fossils around the world.

. . . how the flood worked through scientific laws

. . . why scientific evidence shows that the earth is only 1,000s of years old, despite old-age dating.

. . . how we can see starlight so far away even if the earth is young (it’s a neat answer!)

When you are a Christian young-earth creationist taking geology class for the first time, it is pertinent to be prepared with good fact. Or should I say, good theory.

That is what I learned when I began debating my geology professor about the Genesis Flood and the age of the earth. Since it is an online class, talking about minority views is much easier, since you don’t have to fumble with words and feel all your classmates snickering behind you for believing “myths.” And fortunately, my professor is wondrously polite and thorough in her written responses, so it was actually enjoyable to discuss with her.

She and I went back and forth giving evidence and counter-evidence, and I truly learned a lot from her insights as a professional geologist as she helped me understand the science more. She valiantly defended the old-age geologic view against each of the points I brought up — all points, that is, except one: the hydroplate theory of the Genesis Flood and its explanation of radioactivity.

I was extremely curious as to what she, as a real-life geologist, would say about this theory, but she just wrote that she did not know enough about the theory to discuss it. Hmmm, interesting. I had described the theory in great detail to her, giving point-by-point evidence for each of its tenets. Apparently having a PhD in an earth science wasn’t enough to counter this theory — maybe she didn’t have an answer.

Her silence gave me great encouragement that creation science can withstand its critics in the scientific arena. The critical factor about this flood theory is that it has compelling scientific evidence, not just the easy appeal to miracle that skeptics charge creationists with. To examine this theory for yourself, check it out below. It’s the basic outline (with minor editing) I had sent my professor (By the way, the mind behind the theory, Walt Brown, had discussed his theory and relevant evidences with his professor and friend, Robert S. Dietz, one of geology’s greats. So Brown had his ideas thoroughly tested):

1. The preflood earth contained water chambers 10 miles below earth’s surface. Half of today’s water was in these chambers. This highly-compressed, “super-critical” water could dissolve many minerals like salt, limestone, quartz, etc. The crust atop these chambers was granite, while the crust below was basalt. Heavier portions of the overlying crust weighed down and caused some of the top crust to “flow” downward into pillars on the chamber floor (rock below 5 miles flows like stiff putty).

Evidence: Some of this water has been detected 10 miles under the Tibetan Plateau, (In the Beginning, p. 125).

Evidence: Remnants of this super-critical water are jetted by the black smokers on today’s ocean floors. Smokers are super-heated and contain many dissolved minerals.

2. The waters burst to the surface. As tides from the moon acted on this huge underground ocean, the pressure inside grew like a stretching balloon. It grew so great until a crack burst at earth’s surface, where it ripped explosively through the crust to the chambers and circled the entire earth within 2 hours.

Evidence: The path of this crack is the globe-encircling Mid-Oceanic Ridge. This crack must have begun near Alaska, because the Mid-Oceanic Ridge intersects itself in the Indian Ocean, which is opposite Alaska. Basically, the two ends of the crack circled the globe and then met each other and stopped in the Indian. This V-pattern intersection of two cracks can be seen and tested at a smaller scale.

3. Water jetted supersonically out of the crack, even reaching space. As this water left the chambers, the chamber pillars and the overlying granite crust experienced extreme pressure as they were forced to carry the weight that the water had been carrying. Since the overlying granite crust had a huge area (whole earth) compared to its width (10 miles), the crust “fluttered” like a horizontal flag in a strong wind. Each fluttering wave put the crust through compression-tension cycles.

Evidence: A small example of rock “flutter” happens when an earthquake undulates the ground.

4. This compression caused major electric shocks like lightning to pass throughout the granite crust and chamber pillars. Quartz, a major component of granite, has a unique piezoelectric effect, whereby a little compression of the quartz can produce much electricity. Vast volumes of this electricity shot through the crust repeatedly for many weeks as the waters jetted out.

Evidence: Earthquakes like the New Madrid Quake have produced thousands of cases of electrical activity like eruptions of fire or lightning-like phenomena near the ground and in the air.

5. High voltages created radioactivity. Electricity squeezed atoms together, briefly combining them into superheavy elements that then decayed into all our observed radioactive elements. Vast voltages produced elements like uranium and billions-of-years-worth of radioactive decay by nuclear fusion and fission.

Evidence: In experiments (1999) by Dr. Fritz Bosch, rhenium atoms were stripped of all their electrons (highly electricized), reducing its half-life (time for half of a parent to decay into a daughter) from 42 billion years to 33 years!

Evidence: Inventions like the Van de Graaff generator use huge voltages to reduce radioactive waste by accelerating nuclear decay. The Van de Graaff uses 50,000-500,000 volts for 30 minutes to increase alpha, beta, and gamma decay.

Evidence: Since 2000, the Proton-21 Electrodynamics Research Laboratory in Ukraine has conducted thousands of experiments that have created every element and isotope in earth’s crust through brief currents of 50,000 volts. By concentrating electricity in a microscopic area according to the z-pinch force, temperatures in the area exceeded those found in supernovas. The percentage of elements produced matches the percentages of elements in earth’s crust. What resulted: Beta and alpha particles, which are released during radioactive decay, and superheavy elements (12 times heavier than uranium) that decayed into other elements.

6. Radioactive decay was greatest in the water chamber pillars since compressive pressure and electrical shocks were strongest there at the bottom where weight was greatest. These pillars were swept by the current and blasted into space as comets, meteors, and asteroids. That’s why meteorites have the oldest radiometric ages.

Evidence: Scientists have puzzled over the presence of “chondrules” in meteorites. These tiny BB-sized spheres are found in 86% of meteorites. According to their composition, chondrules were once molten at 3,000° F, without melting the surrounding rock, which has a lower melting temperature! How can tiny spheres be heated to 3,000° F in outer space’s extreme cold? The hydroplate theory explains that these meteorites were once part of the pillars, thus experiencing the hottest temperatures from electrical shocks. Each electrical current concentrated itself into microscopic points through z-pinches as seen in experiments like those in Proton-21, creating chondrules.

Thus, radioactivity was formed. Other events in the flood: As the jetting fountains eroded the global crack hundreds of miles and exposed the chamber floor, the chamber floor at the Atlantic was released from pressure and thus rose upward to fill the void. The Atlantic Ridge rose, followed by other parts of the future Mid-Oceanic Ridge. As the Atlantic Ridge rose, rock within the earth successively buckled toward the Atlantic (to fill the void) all through earth’s interior (melting large portions of it), eventually buckling down (subsiding) the opposite side of the earth, the Pacific Ocean, and creating trenches (most are concentrated opposite of the Atlantic’s center).

The plates on each side of the Atlantic Ridge were now on an uphill slope and began to “slide” on the lubricating water under them, moving the once-connected continents to their present positions. Once the water below ran out, the continents ground to a massive halt that compressed the continents and pushed up major mountain chains. As mountains and continents rose, the waters receded to their present positions. Incidentally, the Rocky Mountains and Appalachians are aligned parallel to the Atlantic, since they were pushed up perpendicularly from the movement of the American plate away from the Atlantic. The continent was like a rug pushed up against a wall; the folds are perpendicular to the motion.

Since continents were pushed up, they were higher than today’s continents. The oceans were lower and warmer than today’s oceans, since much lava had been released on their floors (after all, the Pacific plate [boundary Ring of Fire] just buckled downward towards the Atlantic, so much volcanic activity was started there). These higher, colder continents and warmer oceans were the key to creating an Ice Age. An ice age requires the contradicting conditions of cold continents and warm oceans, since that’s the only way massive evaporation can take place, followed by massive condensation. The Flood provided these conditions for the Ice Age.

The earth was massively imbalanced by the flood, and many processes today have their roots in the flood, such as earthquakes. Each earthquake makes the planet more spherical (this has been detected), trying to fix the imbalances that were caused by the rising Atlantic, subsiding Pacific, and rising mountain ranges. If the earth has been around for billions of years, it should already be as round as it can get from all the shifting inside it. Thus, many things were caused by the flood.

P.S. Did you finish it? Congrats to your attention span! But seriously, this theory is absolutely amazing and shocking when you think about it — it describes the greatest “natural” disaster that ever happened to earth — so great that the earth literally “shook to its foundations.” And not only does its science amazes me, but so does its confirmation of the reliability of the Bible, the Word of God. The hydroplate theory truly is consistent with the Bible.

God sent the worldwide flood as a just punishment on an exceedingly wicked world (“every intent of the thoughts of his [man’s] heart was only evil continually” Gen. 6:5), saving only Noah, his family, and a number of land animals. If God had not warned Noah beforehand and told him to build a huge box-like ship to save life (which, incidentally, was built perfectly for stable floating in rough water without need for speed), then the extremely catastrophic nature of the global flood would surely have destroyed all land life and every one of mankind. We would not be here to tell about it, as so many ancient cultures have done in their traditions. Thus, the hydroplate theory shows not only that the worldwide flood happened, but that the God of the Bible exists and supernaturally stepped into history to save the ones He loved.

If you want to learn more about the theory, check out www.creationscience.com/onlinebook. Dr. Walt Brown invites anyone, scientist or layman, to disagree with him or ask him questions about the theory through email or telephone. I’ve been blessed to recently be in contact with him during my geology class and the experience is truly wondrous — he answers my questions thoughtfully, cordially, and personally. It is both his and my goal to get this information out to as many people as possible, for the Genesis Flood and age of the earth are pertinent issues inextricably linked to the truth of the God of the Bible Himself.